Plans for a new single-site Madras College in St Andrews don’t just affect pupils and parents in north-east Fife.
The row over schooling which has rumbled on for decades was key in the 2007 local government election that saw Fife’s Labour administration booted out after decades and replaced by an SNP-Lib Dem coalition.
The year before, inspectors had slammed Madras because of its dual-campus system.
While junior pupils were taught at the Kilrymont Road buildings in the east of St Andrews, senior pupils attended central South Street.
Although pupils do not have to travel between campuses for lessons, teachers were forced to flit between each building, often with just a few minutes between lessons.
Inspectors said pupils were losing out on valuable teaching, although Fife Council disputed that arrangements had a negative impact.
However the report led to calls for a new single-site Madras College and re-ignited a campaign to build a school serving the Tay bridgehead area.
Currently, around around half the Madras school roll comes from the bridgehead and Leuchars area.
Although Labour only supported plans for a new St Andrews school, north-east Fife Lib Dems promised to create two new schools an argument that convinced voters and helped the Lib Dems into power in a power-sharing agreement with the SNP.
One election and 12 months later, Lib Dem optimism had waned and plans for a new school serving Wormit, Newport and Tayport were scrapped, although it was still hoped pupils would be able to move into a new Madras by the end of 2012.Insufficient numberThe coalition said school-roll projections showed insufficient pupils to justify a new school in the Tay bridgehead and north-east Fife’s three existing high schools Madras, Waid Academy in Anstruther and Bell Baxter High School in Cupar.
Things looked better in St Andrews. The university deal promised one of the best schools in Europe when it was announced in 2006.
It was hoped the school, which would share facilities with the university and cost more than £40 million, would open at Langlands in 2014 two years after the initial planned opening date.
The deal involved the council transferring land at South Street to the university, with the seat of learning, in turn, transferring the Langlands site to the council.
It was hoped agreement could be reached without money changing hands but a gap in valuations caused an unbreakable deadlock.
As recently as April the council maintained the project would go ahead, but two months later The Courier revealed the deal was on the brink of collapse.
Government officials were even called in to mediate but two months after that, the worst fears of many were realised and the council was forced to go back to the drawing board.Second-best optionAlthough the option of redeveloping Kilrymont Road was kept in reserve should the university collaboration fall through, it is seen as the second-best option.
And, although it is now back on the agenda, how long it will take for work to begin never mind for a new school to open will be unknown until the policy, finance and asset management committee meeting on September 22.
The fallout could shape the council again when voters go to the polls next year.
Traditionally a Lib Dem stronghold the party holds five of the seven council seats in the St Andrews and Tay Bridgehead wards the safe north-east Fife seat was snatched by the SNP at the Holyrood elections in May.
A year ago similar triumphs at council level would have seemed unthinkable. Now it remains to be seen how much voters’ patience has been tested by the Madras saga.